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Previous Issues

Previous Issues

Ion implant tools are essential for semiconductor manufacturing because dopants such as arsenic, boron and phosphorous must be implanted into silicon to fabricate transistor structures such as gates and wells.

I sometimes divide information into “heads down,” which describes new design and manufacturing tools, for example, and “heads up,” which includes changes in the worldwide economy, consumer spending trends, and other “big picture” data.

The ITRS semiconductor roadmap has morphed into the International Roadmap for Devices and Systems (IRDS), with a different, more system - and application-focused purpose than the scaling-oriented ITRS.

Factory automation is a key strategy used by many manufacturers to achieve more sustainable manufacturing because of its potential to reduce waste, inventory, unnecessary processing, and idle time. A pilot project at the SanDisk assembly and test facility in Shanghai, China, demonstrates the promise of this approach.

When Dan Hutcheson, CEO of market research firm VLSIresearch, remarked that "200 is the new 450," he was not just poking fun at the nearly stillborn wafer size transition. "200[mm] is hot," he explained, noting that it is attracting more of the industry’s energies toward innovations ranging from new process chambers to advanced automation techniques.

Much of today’s leading-edge semiconductor development is being done, not by using the most advanced design rules, but by integrating disparate chips to meet system-level performance goals. Often done in the vertical dimension, this heterogeneous integration is now among the core competencies of Austin, Texas-based Novati Technologies, a relatively small company with outsized importance in the 3D development field.